Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Jamie McCourt Files For Divorce, Reinstatement As Dodgers' CEO

Well, here we go. All the blabbing to the contrary, it seems to me that the most likely scenario is a John/Becky Moores style catastrophe.

In a declaration, Jamie McCourt said she was fired Wednesday and she and her husband agreed they wouldn't take action until after the Dodgers season was over.

"Frank has no right to purport to terminate me. We are co-owners of the Dodgers," she said. "Not only has Frank publicly held us out as co-owners of the franchise, he has also admitted this fact in front of our estate planning counsel."

There are estate records that list Frank McCourt as the team's sole owner, said Bert Fields, Jamie McCourt's attorney. However, the lawyer who drafted the documents alerted Jamie McCourt to the mistake in front of her husband who acknowledged the paperwork should have reflected the co-ownership of the Dodgers, Fields said.

"It was always supposed to 50-50," Fields said. "New documents were drafted, but they were never signed."

SOSG has more analysis of the court documents linked to (indirectly) above. The Times has a story as well, and Jon has a comment that's well worth repeating:

I don't think it's too soon to state that regardless of how this divorce plays out, Frank and Jamie McCourt have torched themselves in the Los Angeles community. From player payroll to Dodger Stadium ticket and amenities pricing, the explicit acknowledgment of where so much of their money goes, their unrepentant selfishness and greed, is going to bring exponentially more skepticism to any future Dodgers-related decision they make.

We'll see just how much of a house of cards they've assembled, now, won't we? Frank McCourt worth $1.2 billion? Wow. That's unsubstantiated, I have to believe, and designed only to open negotiations.

Think Of The Children: Just curious, but Drew McCourt was recently listed as the Dodger Director of Marketing in a Los Angeles Business Journal piece about the McCourts' breakup. Why isn't he then on the Dodgers front office page, when they have seemingly everybody down to the bat boys on there?